Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781107646810)

This book reconstructs the role of midwives in medieval to early modern Islamic history through a careful reading of a wide range of classical and medieval Arabic sources. The author casts the midwife's social status in premodern Islam as a privileged position from which she could mediate between male authority in patriarchal society and female reproductive power within the family. This study also takes a broader historical view of midwifery in the Middle East by examining the tensions between learned medicine (male) and popular, medico-religious practices (female) from early Islam into the Ottoman period and addressing the confrontation between traditional midwifery and Western obstetrics in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Author: Avner Giladi
ISBN-10: 1107646812
ISBN-13: 9781107646810
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 02/01/2018
Pages: 208
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.48d